In March, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):
  • Support for AdWords features:
    • Call extensions: Call extensions encourage calls to your business by showing a phone number with your ad. You can create call extensions in DS or create call extensions in AdWords and sync them into DS. You can also use DS to report on performance metrics such as clicks on ads that show a phone number, the number of calls made to a specific number, and call conversions. Learn more.
    • Ad customizers: Ad customizers are parameters in your ad copy that will be replaced by dynamic text when an ad is served. For example, you can include the {=Mixers.Brand} custom parameter in your ad copy. If you've uploaded a spreadsheet that defines a value for Mixers.Brand, AdWords will substitute the value when it serves the ad. When you create ads in DS, you can include ad customizers in your ad copy. You can also sync in ads with customizers. Learn more.
    • Adjust bids by location: A single AdWords campaign can specify different max CPC adjustments for different countries, regions, cities, or zip codes. This enables you to maximize conversions by location without having to maintain separate campaigns. Learn more.
    • Upgraded URLs: AdWords is in the process of introducing Upgraded URLs to make it easier to manage tracking parameters and third-party redirection URLs. DS will be introducing updates to support upgraded URLs.

      Important: Don't upgrade keywords and sitelinks yet. For now, it's important that you do not upgrade your keyword and sitelink URLs. We'll provide complete migration instructions for DS users soon.

      DS already supports upgraded URLs for product groups and will use the new AdWords URL fields after you edit a product group in DS. As a result, you'll be able to use new ValueTrack parameters for product groups. Other than the additional ValueTrack parameters, you won't see any difference with upgraded URLs when working with product groups.

  • Unified Device Targeting in Bing Ads accounts: Bing Ads has completed its final migration of campaigns to Unified Device Targeting. Now, all campaigns and ad groups target all device types. Similar to AdWords, the default bid you enter applies to desktop computers, and you can enter bid adjustments for mobile and tablet devices.

    As a first step in supporting this change, DS has removed the old campaign and ad group settings for specifying device targets. If you want to adjust bids for mobile or tablet devices, you need to sign in to Bing Ads and make changes there. It's important to run a sync in DS after you make your changes. This will ensure DS will not change or erase any bid adjustments you make in Bing Ads.

    Now that Bing Ads has finished its migration, we highly recommend that you sign in to Bing Ads and review the results. If you previously had multiple campaigns targeting the same keywords on different devices, you may now be competing against yourself for ad placement. Review the Unified Device Targeting FAQs for more information and recommended actions.
  • Create a geographic location of presence report: If you want to know more about how your advertising performs in, for example, cities in the United States compared to prefectures in Japan, you can now use DS to create a geographic location of presence report. Learn more.
  • Attribution modeling for Google Analytics conversions: An attribution model determines how to distribute credit for a conversion across all of the activity in a conversion funnel. By default, Google Analytics conversions give all credit to the last click. You can create attribution models in Google Analytics that give some amount of credit to clicks on interactions higher up in the funnel. Then you can import the attribution models into DS and apply them to custom Google Analytics activities columns in DS. Learn more.
We also updated the following features:
  • New URL for DS: The URL that you use to access DoubleClick Search has changed from https://www.google.com/doubleclick/search to https://ddm.google.com/ds. You still have access to the same great features, but now they're available at a new URL. DS user credentials will continue to work as expected and existing bookmarks/saved links will redirect to the new URL.
  • Exclude data from bid strategy optimization: DS bid strategies calculate bids based on the performance history of keywords and conversions. Sometimes, an event may occur that causes a skew in the bid strategy calculations (for example, a web page outage). In DS, you can identify the event and instruct a bid strategy to ignore the performance history during the event. Learn more.
  • Updates to Executive Reporting:
    • Segment charts and tables by sitelinks: Charts and tables in an executive report can now be segmented by AdWords sitelinks. For example, you can create a pie chart that shows how much revenue each sitelink has generated or line chart that shows how each sitelink has contributed to conversions over time. Learn more.
    • Download executive reports in PDF: You now have the option to download your reports in the Portable Document Format (PDF) in addition to the Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) format. Learn more.
    • Use formula columns in reports that span advertisers: You can now include formula columns in reports that display data from multiple advertisers. Learn more.
    • Use ad group or campaign labels for faster report generation: By default, when you use a label to segment or filter a chart in an executive report, DS collects and summarizes data from each keyword that you've applied the label to. Because working with such a large amount of data can take a long time, the DS UI displays only a quick preview. Now, you can set up a report to only collect data from labeled ad groups or campaigns instead of each keyword. This makes it faster to generate a report, and makes it possible for the DS UI to display the full data instead of the data preview.
  • Updated search terms report: The search terms report (previously called the search query report) shows the search terms that trigger your ads to appear, and enables you to quickly add keywords or set negative keywords to optimize performance.

    You can now view the search terms report at the engine-account level (for AdWords, Bing Ads, and Yahoo! JAPAN accounts). That is, you can see all search terms across all campaigns in an account from a single report.

    In addition, the search terms report for AdWords accounts in DS now shows search terms retrieved via the AdWords API. Learn more.
  • Broad-match negative keywords are now copied to Bing Ads: Previously when copying campaigns to a Bing Ads engine account, DS would ignore any broad-match negative keywords in the source campaign and copy only the exact-match and phrase-match negative keywords into the Bing Ads account. (Bing Ads does not support the broad match type for negative keywords.) However, now DS copies broad-match negative keywords and changes the match type to phrase in Bing Ads accounts.
  • URL templates are always applied to existing keywords: When DS first released the URL templates feature, you could select the Rewrite keyword landing page URLs not currently using template option to prevent DS from applying the template to existing keywords. This option has been removed. Now, DS always applies the URL template to all existing keywords and any new keywords that you create. Learn more about URL templates.
See these updates in action in the new features training video for March.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team